


I’ll Be Safe, I'll Be Sound

by litte_deborah_zebra_cakes



Category: The Black Tapes Podcast
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Pillow Talk, Richard Strand: King of Big Feelings, Strand POV, Strand is smitten, a smidgen of plot I suppose, but make it sexy, kinda hurt/comfort, sex with feelings, so is Alex probably
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-31
Updated: 2020-12-31
Packaged: 2021-03-11 05:15:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28449801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/litte_deborah_zebra_cakes/pseuds/litte_deborah_zebra_cakes
Summary: The ghosts of his past and the demons that lie in wait in his future are somewhere out there, in the rain and the darkness, slithering around the edges of his vision, but she is right here, bright and warm and solid. “Sorry,” he mumbles into her hair, but he doesn’t let go. She is right here, and that is all that matters.—Strand and Alex finally resolve all that sexual and romantic tension, and reckon with the consequences. Set roughly between 304 and 305.
Relationships: Alex Reagan/Richard Strand
Comments: 6
Kudos: 26





	I’ll Be Safe, I'll Be Sound

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Polytropos](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15928643) by [nerdyvixen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nerdyvixen/pseuds/nerdyvixen). 



> I absolutely loved their dynamic and the poetic nature of Strand’s internal monologue in nerdyvixen’s “Polytropos,” so here we are, 9k some-odd words later.
> 
> I carried over the metaphors, and imagine this to take place in the same timeline. 
> 
> If you haven’t, go read that first to get the full effect, and also because it’s a beautiful piece of writing that deserves your eyeballs.
> 
> Also my apologies in advance for what I’m sure are a bajillion typos

“Richard?”

“Hm?”

“You were staring off into space again.”

“Oh.” He sets his glasses on the desk and presses his fingers over closed eyes, watching colorful stars dance across a field of black.

At some point, he can’t say exactly when, the text in front of him had become a collection of foreign shapes, mocking him with their obfuscation. The rain tapping at the windows seems louder than it should.

From the other side of the desk, Alex breathes a resigned sigh. “Why don’t we call it a night? I don’t think either of us are getting anywhere.” She gives him a weak smile and, without waiting for a reply, begins shuffling papers into their corresponding file folders. Her movements are stiff, the lines of her body rigid with the overwrought will of someone who regularly needs four cups of coffee before noon.

The ghost of guilt stirs him. She’s been gentle with him these past few weeks, even under the strain of sleeplessness, even when he has been petulant and needlessly short with her. Watching her pack away her laptop, he attempts to formulate an apology, an acknowledgement, a thank you, anything. Everything rattles around his head like loose teeth.

Lightning flashes, throwing harsh shadows down the hall as he walks her to the door. Words stick in his chest, caught on razor-edged fragments of truth and myth and memory. These things have been jammed there, choking and fang-like, since the questions posed by Alex’s most recent findings began clawing apart his certainty. Is it possible he is descended from subjects of a religious eugenics experiment? Had his father been working with Deva Corporation to prove the existence of the paranormal? Moreover, if the man who had burned a worship of skepticism into him like a brand had actually _believed_ , then...?

If he dwells on it, the edges of his vision go dark. Air seems to leave the room. The world fractures beneath him like ice, and he along with it, poised to plunge into doubt’s dark waters and the teeth of its creatures waiting to tear him to shreds.

Alex’s persistence would be infuriating if it was not also applied to keeping him well.

“Do you know if it’s true?” she asks, hunching over in his foyer to pull on her rain boots. “What people say about the number of seconds between lightning and thunder being the number of miles you are from the storm?”

He half-leans, half-sits against the back of the living room couch, swallowing the dull, aching hum of panic that has become his constant companion, and attempts some facsimile of a smile. “I’m not a meteorologist. I’d have to look it up.”

“Fair enough.” She slips her arms into her coat and shoulders her bag. “Okay, I’ll see you at the studio tomorrow.”

Alex leans in to brush a kiss over his cheek, and for a fraction of a second, it’s as though she’s kissed him goodbye a thousand times.

Then her eyes go wide. The air around them sharpens.

“I’m gonna— I’ll just—“ she stammers, conspicuously avoiding his gaze and turning towards the door, but not before he sees the color rising in her cheeks. “Bye.”

“Alex—“ His hand darts out to catch her wrist. Her head snaps up.

At one point he had worried the insomnia would dull her, but occasionally it seems to do the exact opposite. There is a sudden, harsh vibrancy about her, like an optical illusion that hurts his eyes. Lightning illuminates the side of her face, and he watches several emotions he can’t place flit through it. “Richard, I—“

Thunder growls. Its resonance is dim compared to the current running through his skin. Her wrist is warm beneath his fingers, warmer than it should be. Her wrist is warm, and her eyes are piercing, and she makes the fissures in his reality less frightening. All these things he knows, unequivocally, to be true.

After his wife’s sudden and near-shattering twenty-four-hour reappearance last year, it had been Alex who had kept him from going to pieces. Alex, with her unfailing warmth and her compassionate conviction, steady and bright enough for the both of them. She had held him and made the grief bearable. She had kissed him and reminded him that sometimes the death of one thing begets the birth of another. Though they could have easily shared breath and skin that night, she had slept chastely on the other side of the bed. In the morning, they had eaten a quietly companionate breakfast in his kitchen. Then she had gone to Portland to follow up on a lead, and he had packed his bags for Italy.

After his three month visit with his daughter, it had been Alex who helped return him to normalcy. She had pestered him about continuing work on his black tapes, toeing her signature line between tenacity and belligerence. She had shown up at his house with deli sandwiches for lunch or burritos for dinner, making sure he ate while they slogged through hours of video. They settled into such a comfortable routine, he nearly began to believe that night months prior had been a wistful dream. Then her hand would come to rest on his shoulder, his elbow, his knee, remaining there long after it made whatever point it was intended to. Then he’d catch her lingering eyes from across the coffee table or the sound booth or the front seat of his car, her gaze knowing and her smile sad.

Whatever her reasons, she had decided they wouldn’t discuss what transpired between them, but she was patently unwilling— _or_ , he dared to think, _unable_ — to ignore it.

He has tried to convince himself that this odd friendship they’ve fostered is enough. It has to be enough. He’s a broken man who cannot withstand anymore damage. She’s a colleague, nearly twenty years his junior no less, with a career and a reputation to maintain. But she’ll make an offhand remark about being awake at four in the morning, and he wishes he had been on the other side of her bed when the night terrors came for her. He’ll notice her watching him as he grades papers or cooks dinner, her eyes decidedly _not_ on his face, and he is overcome with the urge to hoist her onto the desk or the kitchen counter and discover if she still tastes the way he remembers.

He has tried, for both their sakes and to varying degrees of success, to care for her at arms length. But the world is breaking, and his self-control is finite.

Wordlessly, he gathers her in his arms and buries his face in her shoulder. She smells faintly of jasmine and the light soapiness of fresh laundry. Her arms come up around him like she has done this a thousand times. The ghosts of his past and the demons that lie in wait in his future are somewhere out there, in the rain and the darkness, slithering around the edges of his vision, but she is right here, bright and warm and solid. “Sorry,” he mumbles into her hair, but he doesn’t let go. She is right here, and that is all that matters.

There is a soft _thunk_ as her messenger bag hits the floor. She turns her head and presses her lips to his cheek, this time deliberate and unhurried. His fingers curl against her waist. Before he knows what he’s done, his lips have found hers.

After being recalled so often, the memory must have been altered; she is somehow warmer and softer than he thought possible. His hand comes up to cradle the side of her face, long fingers tangling into the baby hairs at the nape of her neck. She melts against him. He kisses her like a drowning man clings to a life raft in a hurricane.

Something between a groan and a whimper escapes her, and a wave of heat breaks over him.

The hand not in her hair fumbles with the tie of her coat. He manages to push the offending garment halfway down one shoulder, and she shrugs it off the rest of the way. Her hands make short work of his buttons, palms searing even through the cotton of his undershirt. An image flashes through his mind, tantalizing and ludicrous, of the two of them as a tangle of bare limbs sprawled on the floor right here in the entryway. There’s the unmistakable jingle of a belt buckle, and the brush of fingertips below his navel...

“A-Alex, wait—“ Gasping, he pulls away. Every inch of him aches in protest. “Are you... Are you sure about this?”

Her gaze is startlingly unwavering. “I’m sure.”

“But won’t—“

“I want you, Richard.”

A pang of astonished nausea rolls in his gut. He runs a hand through his hair and studies the polka dots on her boots while he waits for the room to stop swaying. Silence stretches.

“You can say no, if—“

“Why don’t—“ he cuts in, turning his gaze up to meet hers, lightheaded. “Why don’t you head upstairs, and I’ll meet you up there in a moment.”

She does, all but throwing her boots at the coat rack. He hangs up her jacket and turns off the lamp on the side table. Those four words ring through him, shaking awake every nerve. His heart seems poised to take a hammer to his bones. Everything is dusky and lightning-sharp all at once. He locks the front door.

She sits perched at the end of the bed, studying the bookshelf on the opposite wall with feigned casualness. Even in the low light of the bedside lamp, he can see the flush creeping up her neck and over her cheeks. Her eyes are alight with something he doesn’t quite recognize, and it makes his stomach flutter. Under the weight of her gaze, he removes his watch and his belt, setting both on the dresser before sitting down beside her.

“You’re sure about this?” she confirms.

“Wasn’t I just asking you that?”

“I’m not the one who looks like I’m about to throw up.”

He manages a dry chuckle, studying a loose thread at the hem of her blouse in lieu of looking at her face. This only serves to remind him that a few layers of fabric are all that separates them. The tips of his ears burn. “Alex, I—“ Tentatively, his hand finds hers. “Yes. I’m sure. But I... It’s been quite some time. Since I...”

“Okay,” she says, as if he’s just told her he’ll be a few minutes late to lunch. He risks a glance at her. Her large eyes leave him with the distinct impression that he is the only other person in the world. For a long time, he figured this was a professional tactic, a means of disarming him so he’d open himself to her scrutiny of his own volition. In truth, it is nowhere near as calculated. Likely, it never was. The world narrows to the echoes of their shallow breathing and what little space is left between them. She smiles, and her confident composure momentarily slips. Gazing up at him shyly from under her lashes, she bites her lip. He allows himself to stare. The flush in her cheeks deepens. He doesn’t understand how any of this is real.

Without releasing his hand, she stands and places one knee on the bed, slowly pushing herself up and over him until she straddles his thighs. “Is this okay?”

Desire, thick and syrupy, drips through his ribs. He nods, dizzy with the warmth of her. His hands find a home on her waist. When she gathers a handful of his hair and tugs gently, he lets his head fall back.

She kisses him like a sailor guides a ship by the light of the stars.

His arms wind around her, pulling her close. Curiosity and want and exhilarating terror all swirl around him like the sea. His tongue wanders the edges of her mouth. A hand slides up her neck, and her pulse under his thumb merges with the rush of blood in his ears until the two are one and the same. If nothing else makes sense, at least she is confirmation that the principles of cause and effect still apply. This pushy, reckless, infuriating woman, who pried her way into his life with her eleven phone calls and refused to leave. This woman who, when he wasn’t looking, wedged herself between his ribs and made a home there. If nothing else, she is evidence that when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object the universe rearranges itself. She rolls him over her tongue, and the reality of her sharpens.

She hisses then, pained. He blinks. The buttons on the cuff of his right sleeve have gotten stuck in her hair. Fingers clumsy, he manages to free them, then unbuttons both cuffs and tosses the whole shirt somewhere behind him. Sheepishly, he offers an apologetic smile. The look she gives him in return is so wholly _Alex_ — that mixture of interest and bemusement and levity— that his heart swells. The laughter in her eyes spills over into a cascade of giggles. Then they are both laughing, and he is suddenly a man half his age.

Lightning brightens the room to daylight, and for a fraction of a second, he can see her like this in the morning, having made some corny joke to get him out of bed before going downstairs to make French toast and coffee on a Saturday.

 _One, two, three, four..._ Thunder rumbles, rattling the windowpanes. Their laughter peters out. Something shifts in her face.

Carefully, she takes his large hand in her small one and slips it under the edge of her blouse, placing it firmly against the bare skin over her ribs. Her heat radiates up his arm and floods his chest, percolating downward. He wants to ask her to kiss him until he forgets himself, until he can remember nothing other than her skin and her voice and her name, but his vocal chords fail to cooperate. Just as gently as the first, she guides the other hand up to fit squarely over her breast. A delightfully soft warmth under his palm, it seems molded like it was meant to fit there. For a moment, he can only hold her, veins singing with a potent cocktail of lust and incredulity. Then he squeezes gently, leaning forward to kiss the juncture of her neck and shoulder. She gasps softly, leaning into his touch. He smiles, gathering the fabric of her shirt and lifting it over her head.

Dark hair spills over olive skin, her chest and shoulders dotted with dark freckles like pins on a map. His breath catches. Her eyes glitter. He draws his fingers over her the contours of her collarbone and down the valley between her breasts, marveling at the silky expanse. Reverently, he traces the top edge of her bra— navy lace with a floral motif— with his thumb, and she murmurs a wordless sound of pleasure in response. He wonders, distantly, if she wears underthings this nice all the time, or if she had gotten dressed this morning with the hope that someone would see them.

She shifts her weight into his lap and parts his lips with her tongue. He is sure she can feel him beneath her, hard and eager, but he pushes the thought away, focusing instead on counting her vertebrae with his fingers. The notches of her spine guide him towards assurance. She points him back to a place he had thought irrevocably lost, a place within himself separated from him by a sea of grief and decades. His breath comes easier against her mouth. Her hands gather the back of his t-shirt, a silent question, and he mumbles an affirmative. She tugs it skillfully over his head, and suddenly he is awash with the thrill of her against his naked skin, like stepping into the sunlight after twenty years in the dark.

Her hands wander— over his ribs, through the hair on his chest, up the slope of his shoulders— taking him in. His eyes slide shut, and he exhales with a rumbling noise she seems to enjoy, her body pressing closer. When he looks down at her, a small line has appeared between her eyebrows, her gaze fixed on the faint pink scar on his left shoulder.

“Rafting accident,” he says, doing the utmost to relocate his vocabulary.

“Rafting?” she echoes, brows raised.

He clears his throat, collecting the words of a more thorough explanation “Well, if you consider several two-by-fours, a folding lawn chair, some rope, and a handful of nails to be a raft.” She laughs, and he continues. “I was eleven. Several boys from the neighborhood had constructed it in an effort to reach the island in the middle of the river. The current was rougher than expected, so of course our makeshift vessel fell apart. I was tossed into a particularly sharp rock, and left with quite a bit of torn up muscle.”

She sucks in a breath through her teeth and winces sympathetically. “That must have been awful.”

“It was... unpleasant,” he agrees. “I had to essentially relearn how to use my arm, as well as teach myself to write with my non-dominant hand.”

She quirks an intrigued eyebrow. “Does that mean you’re ambidextrous?”

His mouth pulls into a lopsided smile. “Out of necessity, yes. But I spent the most of that summer reading whatever I could find on woodworking and shipbuilding.”

“Of course you did,” she murmurs, amused. Her fingers brush over the discolored patch of skin before she presses her lips to it.

“Alex?”

She looks up expectantly.

He doesn’t know why he says her name. All he knows is that she is here, and she is looking at him, and she can see through him in that way that is startling no matter how many times she does it. It makes no sense, but it warms him to his core. She has always been a difficult thing to parse, a puzzle to turn over and over in his hands, even when other matters demanded his attention, _especially_ when other matters demanded his attention. Over time, she has become less a thing to solve and more a fascinating source of surprise, the center of a story endlessly folding and unfolding around him until it folded him in with her.

He takes her chin gently in his hand. Tenderly, maybe even teasingly, he sweeps his thumb over her lower lip. She inhales audibly, brown eyes nearly black with desire. Emboldened, he pulls her down to the bed on top of him.

He places kisses like promises over her jaw and down her neck, sealing each one with a small stroke of his tongue. She hums her approval, eyes fluttering shut as her hair falls into her face. Armed with a knowledge he has held close like a precious gift for over a year, his fingers skim down her back to the ticklish spot near the curve of her hips. She squeaks, erupting into a fit of laughter. His heart sings. Squirming, she manages to wrestle his hands away and pins them to the mattress above his head. Something breaks open below his ribs, and he groans, low and animal and wholly uncivilized.

He freezes.

“Ahhh, interesting...” she murmurs, a smile audible in the lilt of her voice. Heat floods his face, eyes shut. She releases him, and then her breath is in his ear, warm and tickling. “You can relax, it’s okay. I like it when you make noise.”

Embarrassment dissolves into the sticky sweetness of arousal. He peeks at her playfully through one eye. “Really?”

“Mhmmm...”

“Well, in that case...” She nips at his throat, and he trails off into a theatrical moan.

She laughs, but the gag has the intended effect; she kisses him in earnest, deeply and thoroughly. Alex Reagan has never been one to do anything with half a heart, and for that he is grateful. For all the pushing and pulling and elbowing her way into places she shouldn’t be, her unquenchable and foolhardy stubbornness has led her here, has led _them_ here.

Deftly, he unhooks the clasp of her bra with one hand. _Like riding a bicycle,_ he thinks with a self-satisfied smile.

Pants, however, present more of a challenge. They manage clumsily, too occupied with each other’s mouths for anything more dignified. There is a good deal of awkward shimmying and kicking. Their legs become a tangle of rayon and cotton and denim and lace, and then they are both bare.

They touch one another like explorers greet the expanse of a new horizon. She is his, and he is hers, and the shock of it pulls the breath from his lungs.

He wants to commit every long, elegant line and gentle curve of her to memory. He wants every tiny detail —the mole just to the left of her navel, the chicken pox scar above her right knee, the stretch marks that fork down over her hips like pink and silver lightning— catalogued and archived. Methodically, he maps the topography of her— the peaks of her nipples that stiffen at his touch, the goosebumps that rise under his breath, the soft hair in the valley between her thighs.

Her hands are everywhere— his neck, his waist, his chest, his thighs, his hips— stroking and pulling and scratching. His breath hitches, and he shudders, clutching at her blindly. Her fingers close around his wrists, trapping them against the bed on either side of him. She places a knee against his bicep, freeing a hand to drag her fingernails up the inside of his his thigh. Sparks chase her touch as liquid fire anticipates it. Her teeth cut into his lower lip. He thinks he could happily die here.

Then she pulls away, and a wholly unbecoming whine climbs out of his throat.

“You tease,” he growls, gasping, head thrown back against the pillows.

She chuckles, a low, satisfied sound that only makes the absence of her touch worse. “I want to see you.”

He frowns, rising onto his elbows to look at her. “You could see me perfectly well from—“

“I mean I want to see all of you,” she clarifies.

Something cold prickles down his spine and into his gut. He has the sudden urge to reach for his clothing— any clothing— or pull her back over him. Pinned in place as her gaze roams over him, he can do nothing but concentrate on maintaining a carefully blank affect. He’s about to remark that he is not, in fact, a life drawing model when her eyes settle back on his face, and the quip dies in his throat. “Am I,” he asks instead, voice low and surprisingly steady, “up to your standards?”

She tilts her head thoughtfully, and the way her fingers glide over his hip nearly makes him shiver. He bites the inside of his cheek in an effort to remain still. With humor shining in her eyes, she finally says, “You’ll do, I suppose.” When he reaches for her, she intercepts, placing a kiss in the center of his palm, then another against his wrist, where his pulse drums feverishly. When she looks up at him, her face is soft and earnest. “You’re beautiful, Richard.”

“I...” He blinks. Though he is already plenty warm, heat crawls up the back of his neck. Staring at a cluster of freckles on her shoulder, it occurs to him that in all his years, no one has ever said that to him. Some have called him handsome, yes, but beautiful? His blush deepens. “Thank you.”

She smiles tenderly, her fingers tracing the contours of his face. She is bold and bright as sunlight, he a moon transfixed in her orbit. Lit by her glow, his body is hers for the taking, his mind is at her disposal, his secrets are hers to hold. It makes no sense, and it makes all the sense in the world.

Her mouth returns to his, pulling a soft moan from his lips. His fingers hold fast the flesh at her waist. Between increasingly labored breaths, he places a trail of kisses down her neck and over the slope of her breast. Once, twice, he swirls her nipple beneath his tongue before sucking gently, losing himself in the sweet softness of her. The sound it coaxes from her throat makes the hair on his arms stand on end. Her back arches, and he reaches up to hold her breast steady with one hand, the other curling against the small of her back. Fingernails sink into his shoulder. Teeth worry at his ear. Her frustrated mewling lights a fire in his belly, and suddenly he is ravenous.

In one swift motion, he rolls over and flips her onto her back. She yelps in surprise, the sound sound transforming into a laugh and then a long, low moan as his lips capture hers demandingly.

Drunk on the sharp tang of her sweat, he lavishes her other breast with equal attention. His teeth graze her nipple, and she inhales sharply, grip tightening on his forearms. She moves to hook a leg around his waist, but he catches it, laying her out before him as he moves lower. He wants her at his mercy— aching, then begging, then spent, knowing that he alone is to blame. He wants her singing his praises like hymns, his name mingling with the taste of him in her mouth long after his lips have burned away all other words. Over the planes of her stomach, he kisses and nips at her skin, savoring every panting breath and quiet whimper. He paints oaths with his tongue over the faint red marks left by his teeth. Slowly, he works his way down, down, until soft hair tickles his chin.

“Yes?” he asks.

“ _Yes_.”

She tastes of salt and musk and earth, and he thinks of eating seafood on the coast of Italy. He’d have her with a Chianti, or maybe a Riesling. He’d have her on the table with the best view of the water, polite company be damned. Her hips lurch up to meet him, her wanton moan punctuated by the _thud_ of her hand against the headboard. He smiles, lifting one leg over his shoulder and holding her fast. A hand tangles into his hair. Breathless, she murmurs his name like he is a god who has gifted her the stars.

Mid-stroke, his tongue halts, and he is rewarded with an exasperated whine and another _thud thud_ on the headboard. He smirks. Her heel digs into his back, both plea and reprimand, and he huffs a laugh before returning to his work.

Above him, her every exhale is a low hum, her breath deep and measured, almost meditative. Every now and then it hitches, followed by a string of quiet curses. Even with the limited view afforded by his vantage point, the bliss on her face is unmistakable. Pride swells in his chest, brazen and deliciously indecent. He is an Olympian warrior among mortal men, with a tongue clever and skilled enough to slay demons. He smiles, reveling in the sweet spoils of war as she shudders beneath him.

When fingers tug at his ears, signaling a need for pause, he rises obligingly. Her hands clutch his face, dragging him up to her mouth, and the realization that she must want to taste herself on his lips nearly liquifies him.

“Oh, _fuck_ , Richard...” she breathes, her emphasis of the hard consonant sound like a small electric shock over his skin.

“Good?”

“Yes.” She nods emphatically, eyes sliding shut. Very.”

He watches the movement of her throat as she swallows, causing a hitch in her labored breathing. The deep flush in her cheeks spreads down her neck and over her chest, having bloomed like a flower opening to the sun. He has seen her undone before, but only ever in fear or anger, as a darkened tangle of raw nerves. Here, unfolded beneath him of her own volition with a satisfied smile curving her lips, she is alight like the dawn.

“Everything okay?” He’s unaware that he is staring until she speaks, peering curiously up at him.

He presses his lips to her forehead, the tip of her nose, her mouth, his teeth gently tugging at her lower lip. “Very,” he murmurs with a smile.

Her answering grin momentarily impedes the movement of her mouth, stretched so wide she can barely return his kiss. She throws one arm around his neck as the other slips between them, fingers following the trail of hair below his navel down, down...

The sound he looses as her hand wraps around him must be at least half an octave above his usual voice. His hips lurch, seeking, _craving_ satiation, and he nearly loses balance. He makes an attempt at clearing his throat, but it rolls into a rumbling growl as her hand begins to move, up and down, up and down, achingly slow.

She giggles breathlessly against his lips. “Good?”

“Mmhmmnph,” is all he can muster. Her touch is firm, her mouth hot and wet. She will be his undoing, he is sure. His destruction will come by fire, just as it should, and if he is lucky, his rebirth by sea. He sets his teeth on her neck with more force than he intendeds, and she utters a small cry, of pain or pleasure he can’t tell. He opens his mouth to ask, but words have fled. What comes out instead is a barbaric grunt, muscles tensing as her grip tightens around him.

She kisses him, possessive and hungry and bruising. The whine that spills from her mouth feeds the flame in his belly. Her rhythm quickens, then falters, and she gives up, wrenching her hips up to trap him between their bodies, hands searing against the small of his back. The world tilts on its axis, and he burns, and he _wants_ , more than he has ever wanted anything in his life, _needs_ her more than he needs the air in his lungs. He bores her down to the bed with a savage thrust of his hips, hand fisting into her hair.

“Mmmnngh,” he growls.

“Condom?” she breathes.

“Mmnh.” He stretches clumsily for the drawer of bedside table, eternally grateful for what had seemed at the time like a ridiculously presumptuous impulse purchase. It takes several tries, but eventually he finds one of small square packages. The only sounds in the world are their panting breath and the slamming of his heart. Her fingers work quickly, and she’s got the thing on him before he quite knows what’s happened. Under her guidance, he sinks into her.

She is hot and slick and better than anything he allowed himself to imagine. He gasps, pressing his face into the crook of her neck, where his sweat runs together with hers. Her hand comes to cradle the back of his head, the roll of her hips urging them into a steady rhythm. When she sets her mouth on his, he is sure she can pull him open and crawl down his spinal column, where together they can build a fire to light their way out of the dark.

He has no idea how, in the middle of ruin and chaos, this hurricane of a human being offers him such unspeakable peace, how she could want the wreckage of a man like him as though he is a shiny gold coin and the promise of tomorrow, how an indifferent universe has gifted him any of this at all. But with every stroke, the need for understanding falls farther and farther away. He sees now that he will never understand, and that is the point. Anything less seems foolish.

They move like waves crash over one another, beautiful and wild. The nonsensical sounds he utters against her cheek coalesce into her name. He repeats it like a prayer— like an exultation to the goddess of creation primordial, thanksgiving for a lifetime of small mercies that has allowed him to make it to this moment. She dissolves him like an ocean erodes jagged cliffs into sand.

“ _Alex_ —“

“ _Richard_ —“

He thinks maybe this is how he was always meant to exist— not as one broken man, but as a million scattered particles, a billion little pinpricks of light. Her legs wind around him, pulling him deeper. There is nothing but heat and breath and skin and Alex everywhere, collecting all his knife-edged pieces to polish them until they glitter, connecting them into constellations that will tell the story of a man who wandered and was lost and of the woman who found him.

Their light grows hotter and brighter, then brighter still, rippling like the aurora borealis, until it is blinding. It churns down his spine in undulating waves, pouring out of him in every direction. Spasms wrack the entire length of his body. A distant voice— his voice, he realizes—cries out, brutish and euphoric. His arms buckle, and he collapses.

Laid out on his back, drenched and gasping, the insides of his eyelids shimmer like he has just stared into the sun.

 _One, two, three..._ He feels the bed beneath him, soft but solid.

 _...four...five...six..._ Thunder rumbles, low and long. Its echoes overlap in deep harmonies as the steadfast pulse of his blood washes him gently toward shore.

His heart jams itself into his throat.

Hot tears sting his eyes.

His body capsizes, and suddenly he is drowning. Freezing water fills his lungs. Salt scrapes the back of his throat. Everything is a churning whirlpool of shame and fear and disgust and wonder, tossing him about like a ragdoll. Fingertips brush his shoulder, and he flinches. 

“Sorry,” he chokes out, squeezing his eyes shut and scrabbling for purchase in the deluge. He bites down hard on his lower lip, willing the pain to shake him back to his senses before the sob gathering beneath his sternum can escape. The moment stretches on. He thinks maybe he will lose consciousness, and that will be the end of that. Then the mattress shifts, and he hears bare feet pad over the hardwood and down the hall.

The air in his lungs forces its way out, a strangled, primal sound he doesn’t recognize as his own. He opens his eyes. The room swims into focus. Studying the crown molding with far more intent than it warrants, he struggles to take several deep breaths and count backwards from ten, the way Alex taught him.

 _Alex_. The arms that held her and and the legs that had tangled around her moments ago are now weights that drag him below the water. _Breathe_ , he thinks. Imagining it is Alex’s voice somehow makes it worse. He wants to crawl out of his body and hide himself away in a cave no one can find, but he forces his focus to the movement of his lungs. He makes fists of his hands, curling and uncurling his fingers until the dizzying rolling of the world calms. From down the hall, he hears the flush of the toilet and the muffled squeak of the sink. Water gurgles through old pipes in the bedroom wall. Hastily, he takes the opportunity to discard the condom in the wastebasket before nestling under the safety of the duvet.

 _One, two, three, four..._ Alex crawls into bed beside him.

... _Five, six, seven..._

She is somehow too close and entirely too far, a light that is both bright enough to burn and barely enough to guide him back to the surface. Cautiously, he reaches out, bumping into what he imagines is her arm. “I’m sorry— I haven’t—“ He doesn’t know what words come next, or even where the thought began. The rationality which he can usually draw around himself with ease is now tangled around cracked-open ribs, caught in the truth of him laid painfully bare.

“Sshh, it’s okay,” she soothes, closing her hand around his with a gentle squeeze. “I’ve got you.”

Her words should be a relief, but instead they send a roiling wave through his chest. Her hand is a fig tree on a flooded shore, and he clings to it for dear life. They lay like that for a long while, the rain pattering against the windows all at once roaring and barely audible.

“I didn’t mean to...” he tries again. “You didn’t get to...“ He had known somewhere in the back of his mind, he attempts to reason, that after two decades of near-abstinence, he wouldn’t last long. The stinging embarrassment settling in his throat is mostly due to the knowledge that this wouldn’t be an issue with a man her own age, a man with fewer scars and more recent experience.

She breathes the slightest laugh. “Richard, it’s okay. I don’t have to orgasm every time.”

“No?” He can’t tell if the strangled thing in his voice is confusion or relief. Tentatively, he opens his eyes.

Bathed in the warm light of the bedside lamp, she practically glows. Her hair is mussed, creating a sort of halo effect where the light catches all the wispy fly-aways, and the color is still high in her cheeks. She looks like a painting, he realizes, some goddess creatrix of old rendered in human form by human hands. His heart stutters.

“No,” she assures him with a soft smile. “All the chronic stress has been making it difficult anyway, so I just try to enjoy myself. Really, that was...” Smiling, she reaches out to run her fingers along his hairline, which is still damp with sweat. “That was wonderful.”

“But—“

“Next time.”

Warmth blooms in his face at the thought of a next time. He takes a shuddering breath and closes his eyes once more, bowing his head until his forehead meets hers. His own lungs remember how to take in air as he listens to her breathe. “‘Little Death,’ the French call it,” he says after several moments, relaxing further into the familiarity of trivia.

“Have I killed you?”

He chuckles. “Nearly.”

“But you’re okay.” It’s more observation than question.

“Yes,” he says, only realizing the statement is true after it has left his mouth. He can feel the thrum of his heart in every muscle fiber, his body lighter than it has been in decades. He threads his fingers through hers and presses kisses like tokens of gratitude against her knuckles, smiling. “Considerably better than okay.”

“Good,” she says. She returns his kisses to his own hands in kind. “You’ve needed that for a long time.”

He exhales a terse breath, perplexed and amused and uncertain if he should be taking offense. “What?”

“I’m just saying,” she says blithely, “maybe you would have been less cranky these last couple of years if you’d been getting some.”

He opens his eyes, brow furrowed, but a smile tugs stubbornly at the corner of his mouth. “You... you thought about that?”

She nods, her grin vacillating somewhere between mirthful and smug.

“Generally, or in specific?” he asks.

“Both,” she admits.

Though he had grown to hope that had been true, had _known_ it was true at some point, he still somehow finds himself mildly scandalized. All the same, the lilt of amusement is there in his voice. “Alex...”

“And you’re going to tell me that you didn’t?” She arches a dubious eyebrow, coquettish and challenging. Heat bubbles back to life below his navel. “Think about me, in specific. Naked.”

“I didn’t say that.”

She laughs, a hearty sound that originates from somewhere deep within her, and he grins.

Lightning flickers over them. He presses his lips to her temple. _One, two, three, four, five, six..._ Thunder rumbles, underscoring the murmur of her satisfied hum.

She burrows further under the covers, fashioning a sort of nest for them both. As she settles into his arms, he imagines she’d be purring like a cat if she was capable. The purple smudges beneath her eyes seem lighter than they have in months, and the ever-present crease between her brows has disappeared entirely.

They fall quiet for long enough that he would think she’s fallen asleep if not for the hypnotic sweep of her thumb over the back of his hand. There’s a small pink welt across her first knuckle, where earlier in the week she had burned herself while heating a can of soup in the studio’s tiny kitchen. Nic had chided her about checking her email while using the stove, and she had shot back with some jab about his knife handling skills. The first aid kit had been empty of bandages, so she’d had to rummage around the office for a full five minutes before finding one in the bottom drawer of her desk, underneath a pile of old interview notes....

The reality of their situation settles in around him slowly, thinning the air. Sharp edges in his chest press into him as he draws breath. Something cold slithers up his spine.

“Alex, we...“ He clears his throat, attempting his usual sober comportment. “We need to discuss this.”

“If by this, you mean the thread count of these sheets, then yes, absolutely.”

“Alex.” Her name is sharp in his mouth, and he wishes it wasn’t.

She nuzzles against him, lazily twirling his chest hair through her fingers. “Can’t it wait till tomorrow?” When he doesn’t respond, she pulls back to look at him. His distress must be evident, because she acquiesces, features sliding into the even expression she wears when conducting an interview. “What would you like to discuss?”

He shifts to extricate himself from her grasp, sitting upright. “This can’t be... ethical. According to standards of journalistic integrity, we probably shouldn’t even be friends, let alone...” He grapples for a word that carries the right weight without being presumptuous, finally landing on “here.”

She draws herself up onto one elbow and cradles her head in her hand. “Well... No, probably not,” she agrees, eyes downcast. She sounds like a teenager resigned to having been told she can’t go on a class trip. “But... it wouldn’t be the first time I crossed a line.”

The unwelcome reminder of their age difference combines with her nonchalance in the face of professional catastrophe, and the cold squeezes through his vertebrae and into his gut. “A few errors in judgement don’t constitute a reason to throw the baby out with the bath water,” he insists. “What happened to wanting to be Ira Glass? There must be other things you want to accomplish in the future.”

“In theory, yes,” she murmurs. “But in practice...?” Her free hand begins drawing small circles on the bedsheets. “I have a hard time imagining any kind of future these days.”

“But you’ve clearly thought about a future that involves me.”

“Well, yes, but—“ She stops, squinting up at him, brows low. “Why does this feel like an interrogation? Why are you on the offensive all of a sudden?”

“I’m sorry, it’s...” He sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose, and tries again. “Standards of professional ethics don’t strike me as something to be taken so lightly.” It sounds clipped and unnecessarily condescending, and he winces.

She snorts derisively. “You clearly haven’t watched much true crime.”

“I just don’t know that you’ve thought through the consequences here,” he explains.

“Of course I haven’t!” As if propelled by exasperation, she sits up, pulling the duvet up to her collarbone with a renewed sense of modesty. “I’ve been up to my elbows in mathematical cults and demonic symphonies and...”—she throws out an arm, gesturing vaguely— “...weird exorcism machines. I feel like an insect stuck in a giant web I can’t see, and I’ve been trying very hard _not_ to think about what I’d have to say to Nic when— if we ever—“

“Alex.”

She continues as though she hasn’t heard him. “I’m worried that my credibility is already shot and no one will take me seriously anymore. I’m worried I’ve forgotten how to be a journalist because I’ve been so single-minded about these goddamn tapes. I think my mother is upset with me because I keep forgetting to call her back, and I’m _so tired_ , like bone-deep tired, _all the time_.” Her words are coming so fast now they nearly run together. “I don’t think I _actually_ believe the world is going to end, but then I have nightmares where your face slips off and I get slowly eaten alive by a tall hairy demon that smells like rotting meat, and the shadows in my apartment still seem like they move in the middle of the night, and I just—“ Her lip trembles, and despite the resolute set of her jaw, a tear slides down her cheek. She swipes at it angrily. When she looks up at him, there is fire in her watery eyes. “So no, I haven’t thought about the consequences, because I just wanted to enjoy looking at you across the table without ruining the one last thing in my life that makes any fucking sense.”

“Oh.” The single syllable hangs limply in the air, an embarrassingly inadequate response.

Several more tears slip from her eyes. She lets them fall, not bothering to wipe them away even as they cling to her chin, and sucks in a wobbly breath. Just as quickly as the fire lit, it leaves. “Why do I have to work so hard to make anything make sense?” Her voice is so small it nearly breaks him open all over again. Cautiously, he gathers her against him, smoothing her hair down and tucking her head under his chin. He can feel the pained crease of her brow against his shoulder. “Richard, what are we gonna do?”

He wants to hum some tuneless melody and rock her gently to sleep, the way he used to with Charlie when she was little. His arms tighten around her. “I don’t know.”

She chuckles weakly, a throaty sound still thick with tears.

“What?”

“You usually have an answer for that kind of thing, and it’s usually snarky.”

He smiles a small, wry smile. “Ah, well. I’m fresh out of snark at the moment.”

She breathes another soft laugh, pressing herself further against him. They stay like that for a long while, his body wrapped around hers as though it will protect them from what creeps through the darkness at their backs. Though the press of their naked skin is a comfort in this quiet space, the snarling and gnashing of teeth in the distance grows louder. He wishes for a moment he had never returned her phone calls in the first place. Then he would have never had so much as an opportunity to bring the demons to her doorstep. Maybe she can burn away the phantoms of his past, but the things hunting them now are already sucking the marrow from her bones, and he led them straight to her.

This one sweet taste of her has been more than he has any right to want. He knew this, he tells himself. _He knew this_. He breathes her in, skin and salt and that faint whiff of jasmine, and lets the guilt take its pound of flesh. Maybe he can’t tame what’s been unleashed, but there is something he _can_ do before anything else has a chance to come for her. The shards in his chest slice through, and he steels himself against them. He can learn to breathe glass if he tries. In the quiet, he indexes every point of contact between their skin, hoping desperately that his memory can recreate it when he is alone in bed in the middle of the night.

“I’m not...” His voice is too loud, but he forges ahead. “I’m not worth throwing away your entire career.”

She jerks back, frowning up at him. “I’m not—“ she begins in protest, but whatever she sees in his face stops her. Slowly, the ramifications of their entanglement make themselves clear to her, and her eyes grow wide with a sadness he’s never seen before. He swallows around the cuts in his throat.

“You’re still young,” he tells her softly, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “You have so much ahead of you. Don’t give that up on my account.”

This time when the tears fall, he catches a few with his thumb. She squeezes her eyes shut, turning her face into his palm. “But—“

“I’m not worth it, Alex,” he says, and the words sink like stones in his gut.

“According to who?” she asks pointedly. Under wet lashes, embers threaten to reignite. “Because last time I checked, there were two of us here.”

He doesn’t know what else to say, so he simply whispers her name with a finality that twists between his ribs. “Alex...”

“Richard, listen to me.” She grabs his chin, forcing him to meet her gaze. Her eyes are bright and smoldering. “I meant it when I said you’re the only thing that makes sense anymore. I don’t understand it, but it’s the truth.”

“I don’t see how that changes anything.”

She scoffs, but a small smile tugs at one corner of her mouth. “For someone with multiple doctorates, you have an incredibly thick skull. That, or you’re willfully obstinate to an infuriating degree,” she says. “Possibly both.”

Despite himself, he huffs a soft laugh.

“It changes everything. You tell me it’s apophenia, or that people on the internet don’t know what they’re talking about, or that I really just need to get off the phone and go to bed, and I don’t have to worry so much.” Her small hands grip his large frame as though she wants to shake him. “I sleep better when you’re around, Richard. You _know_ how big of a deal that is. And until now, that had nothing to do with the fact that you can do things with your tongue that turn my brain to goop.”

The dual heat of desire and pride swells in his chest, and it stings him when he swallows it. “Gelatinous brain matter isn’t typically—“

“Shut up, I’m not done.” Her fingers dig into his arms, eyes burning. “You make everything make a bit more sense, and I can’t pretend that you don’t. I can’t—“

He wants to object, wants to tell her she doesn’t know what she’s saying, but suddenly he is kissing her like a man once lost at sea kisses solid earth. He thinks maybe she has the power to drag the darkness underwater and watch its creatures drown. A part of him wonders if she will drown him too, but he doesn’t care. He will learn to breathe water.

“Alex—“

Her eyes are wet, her mouth turned up in an exasperated smile. “Richard Strand—“ she has his face between her hands, and now she does shake him, “—don’t you dare tell me you’re not worth it.”

He can only stare at her, wide-eyed. “Well w-wha—” he babbles. “What about your show?”

She blows out a sigh and squares her shoulders. “I guess...” Her eyes grow distant, and she chews her lip in thought. “I guess I’m gonna have to have that conversation with Nic. I can trust him to be discreet. Maybe I can even convince him to still be my reference if I have to start applying to jobs with other networks.” She chuckles dryly, an imitation of his own laugh he’s heard with increasing frequency over the last several months. “Honestly, I’d be a little surprised if he doesn’t already suspect something, with the way you’ve been making eyes at me across the conference table.”

“I have not been making eyes at you.”

She only laughs, luminous and gentle as morning, and flops back into bed, tugging at his elbow until he follows. Her arms encircle him, guiding his head to rest on her shoulder. Lightning glimmers above them.

 _One, two, three..._ She is his, and he is hers, and the truth of that sings in his blood.

... _four, five, six_... He drapes an arm over her middle. Her hand begins absently stroking his hair. Somewhere that isn’t here, thunder murmurs.

“What if... What if you ended the show on your own terms?” he asks quietly. “Called it a cold case and started on that interesting jobs piece you intended to do at the beginning of all of this?”

“How can you suggest that?” It’s an honest question, not an accusation. “We’re so close to figuring at least some of this stuff out. Don’t you want answers?”

“I don’t intend to abandon the investigation,” he explains. “But without your involvement, our being...” his fingers wander over her stomach, and he raises the slightest hint of a suggestive eyebrow “... _together_ would no longer be an issue.”

Her hand comes to rest over his over his, stilling it. “How is lying to my audience any more ethical than sleeping with my subject?”

His heart squeezes. “Well—“

“And you mean without my professional involvement, right? You know that regardless of what happens with my job, I’m way too deep in this to just give up and go home.”

A pang of nausea rolls in his gut, but he is prepared for her objection. He rolls onto his side, pulling his head up to the pillow so he can see her face, and opens his mouth, but the hurt that flickers over her features gives him pause.

“Do you... do you not want me working with you anymore?”

His footing slips, and he frowns. “These people are dangerous, Alex.”

“No more dangerous than anything I’ve dealt with before.”

“Unless your previous stories also involved several incidents of stalking, kidnapping, and death,” he says sternly, “I highly doubt that.”

“I’m a journalist, Richard.” Her voice betrays a calm he finds particularly irksome. “Or at least, I’m trying to be. There’s always some amount of risk involved in any story.”

“This is different,” he snaps.

“Why?”

“Because if—“ The fear spills over and coats the inside of his throat, scalding and sour. “Because I can’t—“ His voice breaks over the last word. The heat that warms his bones to life is the same heat that will surely shatter him, and he hates that, and he loves that, and it doesn’t matter how he feels about that, because he can no more change this fact than he can shake the stars out of the sky.

Her hand comes to cradle the side of his face, and he closes his eyes against whatever he may find in hers. She says his name like dawn greets a battered ship after a bleak and endless night. “Richard...”

“Alex, please...” The darkness and its monsters have eaten his words, or the heat has evaporated them, or the gods have banished them. It doesn’t matter. All that matters is that she is here, she is _here_ , and he needs her to _stay_ here, on this earth and in this bed. It is terrifying, and it is beautiful, and she is terrifying, and she is beautiful, and he can do nothing about any of it. Everything swirls around him, a kaleidoscope of pain and hope and dread bursting through the underside of the waves.

Her lips brush against his brow so gently he thinks he might shatter. “I‘ll do everything I can to keep myself as safe as possible,” she says. “I promise.”

He studies her face for a long time. She is here, and she is his, and he is hers, and he is home.

_She is here, and she is his, and he is hers, and he is home._

He repeats it over and over, until he begins to believe it, until the sea settles. Until the world is still, and she is warm as the sand, and the bed is an olive tree still rooted to the ground.

He gathers her against him and buries his face in her hair. “May I make one more request?”

“What is it?” she asks, the concern in her tone palpable.

“After tonight,“ he mumbles into the crown of her head, “no more discussing work in bed, please.”

He feels rather than hears her chuckle. “Okay.” She presses kisses to his chest, and he lets them fill the spaces between his ribs, warming him like melted gold adhering the broken pieces of a clay vessel.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much for reading!!
> 
> I imagine Alex has every intention of talking to Nic, but she keeps putting it off and/or chickening out, and ends up freaking out and backpedaling when he brings it up first, after which she comes up with the plan to buy those extra plane tickets. 
> 
> Title is a lyric from “The Crooked, The Cradle” by The Crane Wives, go have a listen and think of these two if you wanna have even more feelings. 
> 
> This is the first of anything I’ve written in quite a long time, so any feedback is very much appreciated!


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